Impatient With Actions, Patient With Results

Three years back, I moved out of my previous “job” to become an “entrepreneur,” building a business from scratch for my firm. In the three years gone by(time is literally flying, notwithstanding Covid !!), there is one valuable lesson that I have learned.

This lesson has to do with my operating philosophy on a day-to-day basis.

There are ideas to explore every day, products to design, solutions to create, teams to manage, clients to engage with, and a business to develop and grow. What must I do? Where must I hustle and act, and where must I be patient, biding my time?

Naval Ravikant, the famed entrepreneur and early-stage investor, encapsulated the big lesson I have learned in a Twitter message that he put out a few years back.

Be Impatient with Actions and patient with results.

Every day, when you wake up, you can do something that may or may not deliver an outcome. Why wait? Just get it done. If there is an idea I have that I believe will add value to my clients, I don’t wait for the perfect moment; I put it out immediately. I do what I have to do with full attention and emphasis on quality.

But after I have taken the necessary action (I have learned it the hard way), I have to be patient with the results because they are not entirely in my control. The world operates through complex systems, markets, and people, and it takes time for ideas and conversations to marinate and mature. It takes time for people to get comfortable with new ideas and products for them to accept and adopt.

So, I focus on what I have to do and hustle as much as possible without compromising quality. Then I wait for the results to happen. And happen they do !!. All the actions I take- the ideation, the proposals, the conversations, the nudges, the endless reminders- compound over time to generate results.

Our focus and attention are perishable commodities. So every day, I operate on sprints to complete the tasks that I believe will create value for my clients and my organization. And then I wait- with faith and confidence- that my actions will yield the results I am expecting.

That said, while waiting for the results, I keep validating my actions. Could I do something more? Do I need to hustle more? Again the same loop continues – Any other action I can take- impatient with the action !! And then wait for something to give, patiently.